>
>Personally I hate the attitude and policies expressed by the NDA on
>chips that are long out of development. I can understand it for
>'new on the block' designs, as that is how competition works. But
>once a chip has moved from the prototype sample mode into
>full production, I think the chip manufactures should publish
>publically on the web (where it is almost 'cost less' to do so)
>for all implementers to have the information.
>
>As it is, it seems in terms of Intel and other chip manufacturers
>more profitable to make 'strategic' business partnerships with
>'big software houses' (for example, buying a stake in LynxOS
>now LynxOS Works and Blue Cat Linux), than to let the world have
>a crack at the information.
In order to "secure" those "big contracts" they have to give relative
assurances that the resulting boards wont be cloned, allowing others to
cash in on extensive software and marketing costs of these companies.
Theres no sense spending big money to establish a market if anyone can come
along and take away your margins by selling cut-rate hardware. Hopefully
SOME of you understand this.
Its not intel worried about their chips being cloned (they have a team of
international lawyers to police that), its their partners that they are
protecting. At some point some of you will get it.
I think the best strategy is to get intel to have a freebsd driver (as they
do for linux)...which would do more for freebsd than boycotting such
products as some of you have suggested.
Dennis
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
